On February 12, 2025, the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds (TAAF) issued a news release announcing their investigation into University of Texas anthropologist Circe Sturm’s claims to be of Cherokee and Mississippi Choctaw descent. TAAF’s genealogical documentation shows no such ancestry.
I was friends with Circe Sturm since we first met at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) annual meeting in San Jose, CA in 2006. I had read her first book, Blood Politics (2002) during my dissertation research, and eventually came to regularly cite her second book Becoming Indian: The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-first Century (2011). When I met Sturm, I took her at her word that her paternal grandmother was Choctaw, and that she grew up more influenced by her Sicilian-American relatives in Texas. I appreciated that she was clear about being of descent and did not seem to overblow that connection. Since that time, many of us cite her book when we write on and advocate against self-indigenization, “race shifting” as Sturm called it, or “theft of our American Indian identities” as TAAF calls it. Sturm is, for example, cited multiple times in the 2024 special issue on self-indigenization of the journal Genealogy that recently I co-edited with Professor Gordon Henry. That fact serves unintentionally to reinforce the magnitude of the problem documented in the special issue.
I have studied, written about, and commented publicly on multiple self-indigenization cases. After reading the TAAF report on Circe Sturm, I maintain my resolve to keep standing against the phenomenon of self-indigenization, or pretendianism. I appreciate the expert genealogists, tribal community members, journalists, and organizations such as TAAF who do the difficult work of investigating cases of alleged “pretendianism.” They are courageous and their time-consuming investigations are essential to resisting widespread, insidious self-indigenization that is always structurally violent, and often individually violent. As a Dakota (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate enrolled) person (also with Cheyenne and Arapaho ancestors) who is always clear about who and where I come from, I have also expected people to simply tell the truth about their tribal citizenship and/or ancestry, or lack of it. Unconfirmed or speculative ancestry claims are not proof of anything but family or personal lore. That said, in the last few years as case after case has broken, I have changed, as many of us close to this issue have changed. Today, when I meet people who identify as “Indigenous” or as affiliated with a particular tribe or nation—if I can’t immediately check it through my knowledge of and networks in tribal communities—I will wait for evidence to believe them. And I take seriously evidence that I should not believe them.
In addition to finding no Mississippi Choctaw or other tribal ancestry in Circe Sturm’s genealogy, TAAF documentation shows her at various points in her career, boldly making claims to be Choctaw, and sometimes also Cherokee. As an academic, Sturm would know the value of evidence for claims and would have the research skills to find such evidence. We see in her publications and interviews her skill in analyzing white supremacist nationalist and familial histories and narratives in the USA that lead to widespread self-indigenization absent evidence of actual Native ancestry. How could she ignore academic integrity and not turn her analytical lens onto her own narratives and lack of evidence? She could have faced her own truth, been honest with her colleagues, friends, and readers. She could have done her research and written her books and articles as an ally. How powerful such self-reflexive works would have been. Instead, she persisted with distant, unconfirmed, and speculative claims for which she had no proof.
Circe Sturm and I have not spoken since November 2023 after I left a University of Texas dissertation committee in which she was also involved. I read the dissertation as promoting self-indigenization as legitimate indigeneity and as misrepresenting Sturm’s own work where it was cited in the dissertation. I refused to sign off on the dissertation. Circe disagreed with my take. I did not view our friendship as ended necessarily, but perhaps on pause while I focus on advocacy, research and writing, and media commentaries on self-indigenization. I live every day with hope that more and more people will come to agree that we must be unequivocal in resisting this form of colonial theft in every institution and instance where happens, even when it involves those close to us. I hoped Circe Sturm would eventually see the problem with the student and dissertation. It makes more sense now why she defended them.
As Circe Sturm’s longtime friend and colleague in the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) and as a prominent academic critic and analyst of self-indigenization, I add my voice to others who will want her to account for the evidence we are presented by the TAAF investigation. TAAF policy is to give those investigated an opportunity to provide evidence that might counter their findings. TAAF confirms that Circe Sturm provided a response to their investigation, which confirmed her lack of proof of her tribal lineage claims. They write in their report:
Many people now obviously consider Circe Sturm to be an American Indian woman. Therefore, it is very important that she clearly correct this misinformation. Many pretendians never correct the record after their false claims have been revealed. They let people continue to assume that they are Indian. Hence, we request that Sturm let the world know in writing that she is not, in fact, a descendant of American Indians. Additionally, Sturm needs to apologize to American Indians and non-Indians at length, explain her past actions in full, acknowledge the harm she has done, and find ways to redress that harm.
The TAAF report on Sturm further states:
TAAF agrees with the Cherokee Scholars’ Statement that “in the context of higher education, falsely claiming a Cherokee [or other legitimate Indian] identity is academic dishonesty, [and] falsification of a material fact.” Based on this standard, Sturm has engaged in academic dishonesty by misleading her colleagues and students into believing that she is of Choctaw and Cherokee ancestry and implying that her scholarship is informed by an American Indian positionality.
I echo TAAF and their agreement with the Cherokee Scholars’ Statement, and ask Circe Sturm to fully apologize for her misrepresentation of herself. I also ask her to state her intentions to engage in restitution after decades of professional recognition and benefit under false pretences as a Cherokee and Mississippi Choctaw-descended person.
Finally, I ask the University of Texas, where I was formerly a tenured professor of anthropology in the same department as Circe Sturm to commit to addressing this and other self-indigenizer cases within their institution. There are increasing examples of universities across North America that are striking committees and undertaking serious efforts to set policies for obtaining verification of individuals’ specific stated claims to Indigenous ancestry and affiliation when such claims involve positions, resources, and representational opportunities.
Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate citizen), Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, www.kimtallbear.com
Note: I have corrected December 2023 to November 2023 as the last date I saw Circe Sturm. It was at the American Studies Association meeting in Montreal, one week after the Buffy Sainte-Marie story broke on CBC, and we had a tense conversation about the topic of self-indigenization.
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